I recently stopped the CEO of a well-known international company from breathing. Literally. He didn’t take another breath. It was my job.

No, I’m not a hitman. I’m a film and video producer.

I was editing the dialogue in an internal video featuring the company’s annual plan, presented by the CEO. Dialogue editing helps smooth out all the stutters, umms and haws and abrupt edits. The idea is to clean up their diction and delivery.

Sometimes you can go over a sentence or phrase dozens of times, working different tweaks and edits and audio fixes. You hear it so many times in such microscopic detail that you begin to lose perspective.

I was hearing each word, each syllable, each vowel, each lip smack and eventually each inhale and exhale. Each breath, isolated, amplified and scrutinized, sounded grotesque. Huge. Like a hippo snoring.

The human way of speaking is complex and nuanced – words aren’t simply strung together in a logical order. Inflections, emphasis, and emotion infuse our speech; they help to make it more pleasing to the human ear, and easier to understand.

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